Southeast Missouri State University student publication

Career Launch Series courses no longer required

Thursday, January 11, 2018

On Jan. 8, the Office of Career Services at Southeast sent out a campus-wide email announcing the Career Launch Series - the class prefix is abbreviated CL - was removed as a requirement for graduation.

The series was composed of four courses designed to teach career readiness and career preparation for students throughout their time at Southeast. According to Jennifer Woolf, the coordinator of career counseling within Career Services, the Academic Council approved to eliminate the series after a year-long discussion. The causes for the elimination were based on the increasing student enrollment, staff loss and content development.

“Students no longer have to sign up and enroll [in this series],” Woolf said.

Career Services is located on the garden level of Academic Hall.
File photo

Woolf said the Career Launch Series debuted at Southeast in 2005 after the university lost funding from the state to provide career specialists for the students. That loss turned into a CL online platform that provided generalized content to meet the graduation requirement.

Woolf said now the idea is to move the content originally in the CLs and put it into the hands of the academic advisors and departments.

“If we eliminated this current model, [we allow] academic departments to take a little bit more of the initiative on developing that content specific to their majors,” Woolf said.

Faculty still are encouraged to teach career readiness in their courses, such as UI100 and senior-level courses, but they are no longer required to give a separate grade for the CLs.

According to Woolf, students enrolled in a CL for the Spring 2018 semester are no longer required to take it, and they will see the course removed from their schedule. She added that any student that has previously taken any CL course throughout their Southeast career can see the CLs listed as electives in their online degree mapping system, called Degree Works.

Woolf said there is one more opportunity for students to retake any CL courses they failed prior to the Fall 2017 semester if they are concerned with how the failed grade will look on a transcript.

“For the spring semester only, I am going to be instructing and have courses available for CLs one through four that students can opt to enroll in, complete the requirement, and it will then show up on that transcript that they completed it successfully,” she said.

For any student who failed a CL course in the Fall 2017 semester, the course will show up on the transcript as a withdrawn course, however those students also have the opportunity to retake the failed course for a better grade, if they choose.

CL course material will still be provided in the office of Career Services, located on the garden level of Academic Hall.

Woolf said the next step Career Services hopes to take is to start providing workshops for students that will replace the Career Launch series. A start date for these workshops is to be determined.

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